i do care for a small industrial facility with several energy consumption meters. I walk around regular to check them all to have an overview of consuptions.
I’d really love to automate this task to save some time. Another benefit could be that the report is more detailed.
There are so many systems which seem to handle this task but i am not able to develop a solution by programming the last steps. I am familiar with computer issues and so on but i feel not able to cope with things like “volkszaehler.org” or with programming raspberry databases myself (tried with RRD some time ago for a temperature sensor, it worked after maaaany hours).
I have the following counters, which i want to bring together. Of course they are not all at one position, but i have ethernet almost everywhere. I also can imagine to have a central unit from which i can throw some cables to every single counter.
This are the energymeters i want to get:
2 x elster A1500 (1 regular, 1 photovoltaic)
2 x Modbus/S0 energymeter (for renting purpose)
2 x Intergaz gasmeter (they have a magnetic contact which gives an impulse every x m³
1 x middlepressure gasmeter from provider (don’t have an idea if this one has any interface)
1 x watermeter ltron (not so important)
Can anybody give me a hint what to do? I’ve already gave a look on volkszaehler, openenergymonitor, ipsymcon and allnet ALL3691. I’ve actually have a running openhab on a raspberry which could be used to show the values.
This really sounds like a task for openHAB. I tried some time with Volkszaehler, but I didn’t get warm with it somehow - so if you also posted something on volkszaehler, perhaps the guys over there can help you out!
openHAB isn’t specialiized in powermeters to begin with, so as said, if your only goal is to have some Information on powermeters and nothing more, perhaps volkszaehler is indeed better suited - but I don’t know much on that.
what you get with openHAB on top (I don’t know, if volkszaehler does that, too) is rules and Actions. Meaning you can easily mail/sms/telegram/update a website/… with the readings. or use a persistence and HABPanel to generate cool graphs.
for openHAB:
Elster A1500 - i don’t know the protocol of that one, but it seems (from pictures) it uses the standard EHZ - interface. There’s a binding for this in the marketplace (SML Reader - how to integrate - #26 by binderth)
middlepressure gasmeter - if there’s indeed no interface - you can still Mount an Webcam nearby and take Pictures, which get then analyzed - works pretty well I hear
watermeter - could be, that that ones got an magnetic pulser also (see above)
Hi Nico
I am asked to do a frontend application to display data (Consumption etc) from customers of a “Heizkraftwerk”. Every Customer got a meter.(around 160 customers) There is already a system in place. They are using M-bus -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meter-Bus. Data from the meters in hexadecimal-format, saved in a database. Unfortunately they used Microsoft products. (Server, Database, Frontend). Server, Database is very reliable and running for years without problems. Only Frontend Application is buggy and usually stop doing its work. I am a new to openhab2, but I thought maybe someone can point me in the right direction. Is it possible to use openhab in my case?
To be honest, I would strongly recommend volkszaehler, though I must admit it’s not that easy to understand what to do exactly.
But to get it up and running, you would only need a Raspberry Pi (I’m using an old one, Raspberry Pi 1A!) with a little interface card and an interface to communicate with the A1500. This interface does also provide some S0 interfaces which can also be used for reed contacts (I’m pretty sure the second gasmeter will also provide an contactless interface).
I split the frontend to a vm as I own a xen server (getting massive data is much faster) and as there is a database at my vm, so I use this to store the measurements.
openHAB does a request each minute, and I can see current consumption at my sitemap.
Installing volkszaehler was done in about one hour.
I tried some time with Volkszaehler, but I didn’t get warm with it somehow - so if you also posted something on volkszaehler, perhaps the guys over there can help you out!